Databases, Lists and Segments

With databases, lists and segments, Pinpointe gives you maximum flexibility to manage your contacts. But how do you know which is the best way to manage your contacts?  

Most customers will use all three tools to manage their contacts -- here’s how each works:  

• Databases are the primary separate containers where you store your contacts. Most customers will only need a main database but our larger customers may need separate databases for each business.
   
• Lists (or Tagged Lists as they are sometimes called) are like sub-lists within databases.  
• Segments are saved searches across all contacts of one or more databases and are used to select contacts based on custom field values and contact behavior (like whether a contact opened an email or clicked a link).
   

Databases 

Within a given database all contacts are de-duplicated on import so, for example, jane@pinpointe.com can only be in that given database once. Databases add extra flexibility for our customers who:  

• Manage multiple websites
   
• Support multiple businesses or business divisions
   
• Provide services to multiple customers
   
• Have a sales team and each sales representative or region manages their own database of contacts (or the marketing department is managing each for them).
   

With databases  - and this is really important - if jane@pinpointe.com is in multiple databases, Pinpointe will manage jane@pinpointe.com in each of these databases as 2 different contacts.   

If you want to have jane@pinpointe.com in multiple lists and ensure that she is tracked as the same contact across these multiple lists, then use our ‘List’ feature described next. 

Using Pinpointe's "Search" tool, here’s an example of a contact appearing in two separate databases: test.user01@pinpointe.com: 

In many cases, you will only need to set up one or two databases - perhaps one for customers and another for your company’s internal contacts. Or, if you have multiple websites - you might have a separate database to manage the contacts for each site separately.

For each database you can also set several properties including the default send-from email address and name, address, description and more:

Lists (or Tagged Lists)

Lists are just subsets of contacts within a database. A contact in a database can be "tagged" to be in multiple lists and Pinpointe will manage this as a single contact. Most customers will use our List feature because it is simple to use. If you only have one master database, then you will probably always use Lists. 

Below is a screenshot of a customer's master database with several lists:

Example Use: Track Individual Lead Sources with Lists 

Say you maintain a ‘Company Contacts’ database, but you get new subscribers from webinars, trade shows and events. When you upload your contacts into a database, you can easily create a List Name (a.k.a. Tagged List name) that represents the source of your contacts when importing.  Then you can easily select these contacts by source for future campaigns and reporting.

Segments or Saved Searches   

Segments are a way to search across all contacts in one or more of your databases and select a defined group based on custom field values and behavioral information such as whether a contact in a given territory opened a certain campaign or clicked X number of links. 

Here’s an example of a Saved Search (Segment) that we used to follow up on a webinar. We pulled out all contacts in the West Coast Region (CA,NV,WA and OR), who had opened one of the email invites and who also have specific titles: 

Note that the segmenting rules can either be "and", "or" or a combination of both. This allows you to filter your contacts to a highly granular degree.